August 18, 2007

A Spectral Tiger from the World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game recently sold on eBay for $2000. If we'd have known that the Spectral Tiger that WoW Insider gave away last month would sell for $2000, we would have said. "Contest be damned! We're going to Vegas baby!" The reason the card is so special is because it also gives you a rare mount inside of WoW once you input a code.

Another reason the card sold for so much is that the card set it comes form, Fires of Outland, won't even be out until August 22nd. Beyond that, it's still apparently a rare card. As WoW Insider points out, $2000 is 11 years of game time -- and yes, that's the way they think about these things. Of course, like all things WoW, people go nuts and spend all this money and time on something to only have to be made completely uncool and pointless by something else a month later. But, you know, you're still World of Warcraft cool for a whole month.

Professor Falken would have been proud of this one: a company in England is selling an RC Pterosaur with a 100-foot range, allowing you to chase any non-paleontologists off your land from the comfort of your easy chair. The ten-minute flight time provided by the internal rechargeable battery won't give you a lot of time to do your dirty work, however, and the cartoony facial expression and distinctly non-terrifying flapping wings mean you'd better have a solid Plan B. Available now for ($80). Check the read link for a video of the beast in flight.

August 15, 2007

This is the kind of beautiful weirdness and can-do spirit that makes me smile and realize that I fucking love people. Inspired by Dune these tech-nerds are developing cheap DIY technology to take themselves off the grid.

Solar ovens, solar-powered water heaters you can make for $5, battery chargers and much more. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, save a ton of money and build some cool shit, check them out.

Casual game aggregator Knibble.com has launched a Wii-specific portal of its website, creatively titled Knibble Wii, which boasts more than 5,000 web-based games compatible with the Wii Internet Channel. While this comprises only about half of the 10,000 games available at the Knibble website, all games accessed through the Knibble Wii portal are purported to be compatible with Nintendo's console.

"We are very excited to provide Wii users with an entirely new and comprehensive set of games, all easily reached from their Wii console," said Sashi Chimala, founder and CEO of Knibble Wii. "The success of the Wii has completely opened up the casual gaming market. We are very pleased to be a part of it and look forward to the future of online casual games."

The microchips inside future computers could be chilled by tiny "ionic wind engines" that use an electric current to generate a cooling breeze.

Researchers at Purdue University in Indiana, US, are testing the engines as a way to cool computer components more effectively. As microchips become ever more powerful, and manufacturers try to pack them closer together inside computers, it becomes increasingly difficult to cool them properly. Keeping components cool in large data centres can cost many millions of dollars each year.

Microchips are normally cooled using a heat sink, which absorbs and dissipates heat, and a small fan. Adding ionic wind engines to this set-up could dramatically improve cooling, says Suresh Garimella, who is developing them with colleagues at Purdue University.